Businesses Remember the Social Part in Social Media

Businesses Remember the Social Part in Social Media: When it comes to successful social media marketing to an audience, in my opinion, one of the biggest mistakes that many businesses make is that they are too focused on “the sale” and forget about “the social” aspect.

The words social media describe what it’s all about actually ….being” social”.

If your social accounts just always offer unadulterated sales pitches many who could be ideal leads, or indeed existing followers will be put off and regard your efforts as spam and indeed an annoyance on their feed.

In my opinion, you should always strive to be social and socialize with your audience – build a following and build a relationship along with educating people about what you offer.

Being social helps you in the long term because people respond to genuine social interaction.

This post comes about because in recent times I interacted with a lead: who sells niche health products. Years in business successful enough offline from what I could gather but with a very poor online footprint – just bad. The interaction from him went something like this: ” i want to be on all the main social platforms because X situation is an opportunity”. I replied with – Great- but social accounts don’t appear by magic! Whos going to set them up, optimise them and update them consistently and whos going to interact to build an audience of followers? Would you pay for ads? No-I thought it’s free. The point is this chap simply didn’t get it – he simply could not get the fact that successful social accounts engage with people just as much as selling them on a product or service.

This mindset is not uncommon I’m afraid but I repeat my belief that the power of social media all stems from being social first- interacting with a relevant audience and building followers. The power of social media is that you can find a relevant audience through “target” and “reach”.

Target and Reach:

Remember, most social media users have connected to like-minded people apart from their family and friends, others, who have an interest or passion for something.

Social media used correctly allows you to connect and target/ reach people who have passions about something.

Let’s say “fishing” is your sector so for marketing purposes you have the potential of all that extra target and reach because just 1 follower who loves fishing can share your content with his hundreds or indeed thousands of online social fishing pals. But only if you establish trust and interest with him in what you have to say. Otherwise, why would he bother to share or like?

Most social media users have often already connected to like-minded people apart altogether from family and friends- they may have hundreds or indeed thousands of followers – that your business can both target and reach, but if you start out bombarding them with ” in your face sales pitches” you will piss them off-no better than spam.

OR – The opinion of a salesperson you just met- giving an obvious hard in your face sell.

The simple fact is that people will be much more likely to buy or hire from businesses they trust, or from businesses that their trusted friends or family trust.

If you get social media users to trust you, you can make your social accounts actually work for you.

You can earn trust by

• Being social,
• Posting useful information
• Recommending quality products and links

When it comes to social marketing I believe it’s very important that you use social networks as they were intended to be used (to be social), especially if you want to see tangible results from your efforts.

Social media can be less expensive than other forms of marketing but is a considerable time suck so use it wisely or potentially waste your time.

I specialise in helping Businesses who provide services , professionals , freelancers, health , wellness, local and  Startups.  Designing , Creating and  Managing  WordPress Sites. Presenting online workshops 1 to 1 training on zoom. Creating digital content blog posts , social video , social graphics and much more. The focus of my business is to help business to compete in the online space by creating customer focused content. I really enjoy teaching and helping business understand what to do and how to promote their businesses in the online space

Rosemary O Shaughnessy